It’s commonly accepted and practiced to express a theme throughout your screenplay. Some call it the mind if the screenplay and some call it a well which everything else in the story springs from, but no matter what you call it, it’s one of the most important aspects I writing … by far!

Let’s look beyond the commonly practices and accepted and try something new.

In my opinion, the beat themes are the dynamic themes – the themes that don’t necessarily change, but which set up change. This is what Lajos Egri and Robert McKee taught us. The themes that have multiple sides – more specifically, those which play off positive and negative sides … opposites.

So how about taking it further? What if we designed and explored a theme with three sides to it?

Three is an important number to storytellers; it represents beginning, middle, and end as well as one of most beloved character dynamics found – the love triangle.

So what’s to say this couldn’t work on a thematic level?

What if we explored a theme that made the character arc a but easier to explore through the second act?

By exploring a theme, such as Greed leads to Loneliness, with an additional side, such as Loss, we might be able to define our second act more clearly (where theme quickly drops out of the picture with most screenplays), thereby making it more specific and more tuned toward where we’re going with our story and what we want to say with it.

Here’s a poor example of theme in a screenplay:

GREED

Here’s a good example of theme-arc in a screenplay:

GREED leads to LONELINESS

Notice that infamous “leads to” between our two sides of theme? That’s the entire second act of your screenplay. Leaves a lot of room for meandering away from your original idea.

By transforming this “leads to” portion of your theme into an additional side, representing the secubd act of your story and change your character is experiencing at the time, it might make it easier to stay on track and avoids hitting that second act wall.

Lets look:

GREED to LOSS to LONELINESS

This seems more dynamic, more emotionally interesting, and more defined than the aforementioned examples.

Try it with your own themes and see if it works out.

Leave your discoveries and notes in the comments form below.